EPISODE REVIEW
“Dead Before Dawn” is a terrific penultimate chapter with a clever reimagining of The Joker’s debut from BATMAN #1 (1940). The Joker has been lurking all season, but his presence and plan are now front in center.
His hijacking of Hattie’s Tea Party is scary AF and straight of his very first appearance in comics; including the public death sentence for Mayor Jessop. He now has set off a citywide panic that feels ripped from a vintage pulp thriller from 1940.
The episode escalates beautifully — Joker Venom doesn’t just kill; it mutates victims into a walking dead (thanks to The Joker’s murderous acquisition of Hugo Strange’s Blockbuster/Monster Men serum). The Joker Zombies are now vampiric, biting carriers of a plague, turning Gotham ground zero of a pandemic. As the infection explodes across the city, even The Batcave, and Alfred, isn’t spared.
“Dead Before Dawn” leaves us with a dark, apocalyptic cliffhanger.
Can The Caped Crusader save his city? We shall see! – Bill “Jett” Ramey
PODCAST
On the latest edition of Batman-On-Film.com’s BATMANIMATION podcast, BOF Founder/EIC Bill ‘Jett’ Ramey and Senior BOF Contributor Javi Trujillo dissect and discuss “Dead Before Dawn,” the ninth episode of BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER’s second season.